This course is designed to provide leaders and professionals with a set of transformational tools and techniques to help them maximize their own and their team’s creative potential in a strategic context. Its starting-point is self-discovery: participants will work on the inside first and then focus outwards to impact on the world of business.
The focus of the first week of this 2-week seminar will be on thinking in different ways. Participants should be prepared to move out of their comfort zone and experiment with new ways of creating and communicating an inspiring leadership vision.
The second week helps demystify the frequently-misunderstood concept of ‘strategy’. Whilst focusing on the analytical disciplines on which a successful strategy is based, it centers on strategic planning as a value-adding process that harnesses the leader’s and the team’s ability to combine analysis with creative thinking and enables ideas and plans to be nurtured through to reality.
At the end of this course the participants will be able to:
Demonstrate innovative methods for harnessing others’ creative potential.
Communicate your vision in refreshing and engaging ways.
Define the concepts of ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic plans’.
Understand and explain visionary thinking as part of the strategic process and apply strategic planning to your own management issues.
Place your own part of the organization within the overall context of corporate strategy.
Gain confidence in managing your own contribution to strategic implementation.
Senior Management Professionals, Team Leaders, Supervisors, and All Professionals who are responsible for driving company growth by creating or eliciting new ideas and paradigms. Alternatively, you may be stuck with your own ‘logical’ career journey and seeking an opportunity to explore beyond its boundaries
Anyone who wants to forge innovative approaches to communications, or to human resource and training managers searching for breakthrough ideas and tools they can use to harness the creativity in others within their organization
Leadership Reality Assessment.
Leadership Vs Management.
Understanding Our Brain Function.
Myths of Creativity.
The limitations of the rational.
Divergent approaches to problem-solving.
Letting go of logic.
Analogous thinking modes.
Convergent and divergent modes.
Sigmoid Curve - Lifecycle Model.
Continuous Improvement.
Breakthrough step change.
Self-awareness and the nature of the ego.
Personal goal alignment.
Adaption and innovation: personal preferences for creating meaning.
Exploring attitudes to risk.
Left- and right-brain thinking.
Six thinking hats.
Using differing thinking styles.
JoHari’s window.
The business plan process & creating a vision.
Harnessing the power of the team.
Organizational culture and its influence on innovation.
Letting go of the ego.
Working with different creative preferences.
The 7 Step Creative Process.
Models of communication.
Viral visioning.
Authenticity and trust.
Creativity tools, techniques & strategy.
Letting go of the vision.
Leading without directing.
Possible leadership beliefs.
Motivation - Hierarchy of Needs.
Overcoming organizational barriers to creativity and change.
Nurturing a learning environment.
Is Money a motivator?.
Personality Profiling.
Building a creative consensus.
Engaging stakeholders creatively.
Influencing and motivating through change.
What are strategy and strategic planning?
Why are strategy and strategic planning important?
What are the main conceptual frameworks?
External analysis - understanding and analyzing business attractiveness - macro-environmental factors, growth drivers, competitive forces, market dynamics.
Benchmarking your own strategic position/competitor analysis.
Analyzing customers.
“Thinking backward from the customer”.
Mini-case on importance of external analysis.
The interface of external and internal analysis.
Internal analysis: financial.
Internal analysis; non-financial.
The concept and practicalities of the “balanced scorecard”.
Diagnosing strategic problems and opportunities.
The fusion of analyses into strategic choices - SWOT and the strategy matrix.
Case examples of strategic choice.
Mini-case on importance of internal analysis.
Review of the tools used so far.
The content of a strategy: avoiding “paralysis by analysis”.
Putting a strategic plan together – the 5-page framework.
A real-life example of a business strategy/strategic plan.
Strategies for alliances and joint ventures.
Example of best practice in alliances and joint ventures.
Introduction and briefing for the main case study.
First-phase group work on the main case study.
The essence of globalization and global strategy.
Globalization – the strategic dimension.
Globalization – the organizational dimension.
Globalization – the human dimension.
How to build and manage a strategic planning team.
Communicating strategy through the organization.
Gaining your team’s commitment and buy-in to the strategy.
Second-phase work on the main case study.
Final-phase work on the main case study.
Group presentations of the main case study.
Effective execution - converting strategic analysis and planning into action.
Linking strategy with operational objectives.
Implementation – getting practical things done.
Strategic planning of your own career.
Creating tomorrow’s organization out of today’s organization.
Conclusion - the corporate and individual value of strategic thinking
This program provides an introduction to finance and accounting for those who have no prior knowledge of this business area. It is designed to train the participants to support operational and financial processes. Those attending this course will gain a clear understanding of the essential terminology of finance and accounting. They will also learn the principles and techniques of accounting systems through practical examples and exercises.
The overall aim of the program is to ensure that those who attend will be able to perform more effectively and efficiently within the workplace.
Document control and record management should play an important role in identity and access management by protecting sensitive documents from exposure to the wrong parties. They should also support simplified access when needed by allowing authorized parties to quickly search, find, and retrieve archived and active documents. This course provides a strong understanding of the concepts of Document Control and Records Management and develops the requirements to help Document Controllers, Records Managers, and other staff improve the control of critical documents across the organization. Using best practice and time-proven methodologies and techniques, the course enables participants to understand and implement key document control methods and improvement plans, and to understand the impact of wider information management issues and challenges.
Organizations typically start using electronic document management systems to transform paper-based operations after reaching an internal tipping point in which customer response times become too slow, departments don’t have enough bandwidth to solve recurring process bottlenecks, paper archiving becomes too costly or large-scale regulatory risks are exposed during a data breach or compliance fines.
For organizations that have defined but resource-intensive business processes, EDMS is an ideal fit. Document management helps organizations across industries sidestep this busy work entirely by eliminating manual document maintenance, reclaiming valuable staff time, and boosting the bottom-line.
The best leaders thoroughly understand themselves. Time and time again, research has shown that self-awareness and self-direction are two essential factors in leadership effectiveness. As leaders gain a better sense of themselves and a clearer plan to self-actualization.
Mastering the inter-related skills of communication, negotiation, and presentation is the key to success both for individuals building their careers and for the organizations in which they work. Drawing on classical learning, psycho-linguistic research, and ideas associated with NLP and Emotional Intelligence, this highly interactive and hands-on program helps participants explore and practice the principles and techniques they need to be effective communicators, negotiators, and presenters. Most importantly, it focuses on helping them apply these skills in the workplace as part of a process of continuous learning.